20. The Root of All Evil
20. The Root of All Evil
Shhk.
Hot blood sprayed. A familiar sensation. Rus had seen the blood of countless others before.
When she had pierced Kirke's heart, when she had slit Milia's throat, when she had severed the arm of Risha—driven mad by the Magic Spear—and when she had finally killed Chloe Pisti.
There had been so many others she had wounded or killed, and each time, their hot blood had drenched Rus's body.
So there was no reason to be shocked by this sickening reek of gore or the vile warmth. There shouldn't have been.
"Adam."
No.
This was different.
The world seemed to slow to a crawl. She wanted to close her eyes, but her senses—enhanced to near-7th Rank by the Dark Sword—refused to let her.
A span of time no longer than a single second.
And in that second, Rus witnessed it all: Adam, his heart pierced through, collapsing in a spray of his own blood.
"Adam!!"
No one answered her scream. His life was already gone.
A pierced heart cares nothing for one's Rank. Even Rus, even the Chairwoman, would die if their heart was destroyed. It was an absolute law of living beings.
The instant it pierced Adam's heart, the Salt Spear dissolved back into scattered salt. That fact kept Rus safe.
But what did that matter now?
Crunch. Crunch.
Even now, the Dark Sword slipped from Rus's control, burrowing into her other arm to seek more blood. Adam's body slumped onto a salt dune, salt crystals clinging to his wound.
He was in danger of sinking into the salt, swallowed by it.
Rus simply seized the Dark Sword's blade with her bare hand.
Blood fountained from the cuts in her palm, but she paid it no mind.
"Stay still!!"
The Dark Sword was bound to her on a soul-deep level, having regressed alongside her. Its loss of control was the anomaly.
In this desperate moment, Rus muttered the command under her breath, and only then did the blade stop drinking her blood and obey her grip, as if finally judging her condition acceptable.
Her arm where the Dark Sword had been lodged was torn to shreds, but Rus rushed to the fallen Adam.
"Adam, Adam!!"
She pulled him free before he could be buried in salt. Hot blood continued to soak them both, staining the salt beneath them.
The wound in his chest was so grievous she could see through to the other side. The Salt Spear had been enormous—Adam's heart was simply gone.
Even at a glance, the truth was clear.
Adam was dead.
"......Ah."
Adam was dead. He was dead, and now he was gone.
Then, what now?
What was she supposed to do?
—Rus had originally intended to kill Adam.
She had witnessed all the death he'd caused, the destruction, the continent falling apart because of him.
She'd resolved to stop him, even if it meant killing him. Each time, she'd hesitated only because her memories with Adam—the single warm spot in her cold existence—resurfaced.
The man who'd called her his protagonist, the mentor who'd always given her immense help, had become the destroyer of the world. The contradiction of it.
Unable to accept it, she'd denied reality as she tracked him and Chloe, witnessing every single thing Adam caused.
In a continent choked with chaos and death, Rus had reached her conclusion.
She had to stop Adam. Even if it meant killing him.
'Adam.'
So she'd killed Kirke, who was slaughtering thousands in the Holy Kingdom while searching for the Sacred Relic.
She'd killed Milia, who had murdered the Empire's 8th Rank and now ruled as Pope of the Wish Order.
She'd cut off the arm of Risha—body and soul stolen by the Magic Spear, turned into a killer—slicing through the spear itself to do it.
She hadn't been able to grant peace to Beatrice, drifting above the Delphia Ruins in a state worse than death, but she had buried her kin in a sunny spot.
And after a long, grueling pursuit, she'd killed Chloe Pisti in front of a cave.
And at the end of that cave.
'......Adam.'
She killed Adam Caines. She cut his throat. That marked the end of her purpose, and with it, the end of her life.
The Empire had hailed Rus as a hero, but it meant nothing. The surviving 8th Ranks expressed their awe that a mere 6th Rank had accomplished it all. That didn't matter either.
In a life utterly devoid of color, the first light Rus had ever seen—the academy's perennial dead-last—was Adam.
And by snuffing out that corrupted light with her own hands, Rus had fallen back into darkness.
So what about now?
She'd believed she had to stop him, even if it meant killing him. And now that Adam was dead.
How did Rus Spero herself feel?
'I, I...'
She'd seen Adam at the entrance exam. Remembering everything he'd done, she'd kept her guard up.
She'd seen him at the entrance ceremony. She'd warned him, but her heart wavered—he seemed so much like the warm Adam from that lost time.
She'd seen him during the uninhabited island midterm. Seeing him overlap with his former self had helped her steel her resolve.
She hadn't seen him at the summoning ritual. But she'd been thrown by the altered future, agonizing over her own usefulness.
She'd gone to his dormitory. An Adam whose circumstances—even his living quarters—had changed completely... She couldn't leave him alone, if only to prevent his corruption.
She'd seen him during the academy terror attack. Adam had been the mastermind who commissioned the Order's attack. She'd been disappointed, thinking his warmth was all an act—and then she'd learned it wasn't.
She'd seen him again during the financial audit. Because of a small connection forged in the mines, she'd received his heartfelt thanks. She'd been happy.
And now.
Right here, Rus felt—
'I wish... Adam wouldn't die.'
Just, just.
Like those days, the only warm ones in her life. If they could just live together, comfort each other, eat meals while facing each other, laugh and talk late into the night.
She wished Adam could be her refuge. Rus, who'd carried the crushing weight of regression and the continent's future, sought just a single moment to cast off that burden.
Over his corpse, she wept.
You idiot. Why couldn't you be honest with yourself?
Because he was a criminal and mass murderer who'd burned the continent? Because you thought all that warmth was a lie and reeled from the betrayal? Because you had to save so many others?
Yes. All of that was true.
But Rus just wanted to be a little selfish.
"Don't die... Adam."
At last, honest with herself in more ways than one, Rus cried out, her voice thick with tears. But no answer came—no Adam waking up and asking why she was crying.
Because Adam was dead.
Dead—
Ba-dump.
"......Huh?"
Ba-dump. Ba-dump.
He was dead. His heart had been pierced, utterly gone.
But she could hear it—a heartbeat, impossibly faint. It was slightly different from the rhythmic pulse the Sacred Relic fragment emitted.
And at the same time—
"His breath...!!"
Adam exhaled. Weak, terribly weak, but he was undeniably still breathing.
It defied all common sense. His heart was completely destroyed, yet she could hear a heartbeat. He should be dead, but he was breathing—alive.
Normally, Rus would have considered necromancy animating a corpse, or an illusion, but not now—not with her mind shattered to pieces.
"Thank goodness... thank goodness..."
The regressor laughed, a broken, unhinged smile, tears still streaming down her face. She gently laid Adam down, using her ki to shield his body from being buried in the salt.
Adam was alive. That single fact was enough to make Rus move, wrecked and ruined as she was.
Her cold eyes turned toward the other heart.
Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.
The Sacred Relic fragment.
The heart fragment that had controlled the salt, that had launched the Salt Spear—for some reason, it only pulsed quietly now, as if satisfied with piercing Adam's heart.
But when Adam began breathing again, and when Rus rose with the fully awakened Dark Sword in hand, the Relic began to move once more.
The fragment spun with a vicious hum, and this time it spawned dozens of Salt Spears.
"So you want to kill Adam and me."
Rus's face held an utterly strange expression.
She wept, yet smiled. Crying, but with the corners of her mouth lifted.
In her hands was the Dark Sword, having drunk its fill of her blood and now radiating an even more ominous aura.
Broken and battered as she was, Rus leveled the Dark Sword.
'Please.'
There was a wish she had always made from the moment she'd first taken up the Dark Sword.
A wish she'd repeated endlessly, yet one that had never come true—an embarrassing failure, considering it was considered to have the power to grant wishes.
The wish was—
'Let me go back to those happy days.'
Wooom!!
The Dark Sword responded. The demon blade that had just touched Adam, a complete contrast to its previous behavior, now followed Rus's command with absolute, quiet certainty.
Rus Spero's body was enveloped in darkness. A sinister, shadowy power, the exact opposite of the Sacred Relic fragment's radiance.
And from within it, Rus leaped.
—To still be only 6th Rank after going through all that... ridiculous.
—You lost to that 6th Rank, and you still run your mouth? Pisti.
—I'm not Pisti anymore, dead-last loser. Called a hero all you want, but you're still as dumb as ever.
—What do you mean, dumb?
—Because you should've reached 7th Rank ages ago, and you're still 6th. From where I stand at 7th, you're still nothing but a half-wit.
—......Adam is inside this cave, right? Do you have anything left to say to him?
—You'll understand when you reach 7th Rank yourself. And... Adam.........
The requirement to become 6th Rank was simple. Reach a level that common sense deems impossible—manifest sword aura or rigid energy. Power enough to split a mountain with a single blade, or carve a basin with a single fist.
7th Rank was just as clear. Go beyond simply manifesting sword aura—you had to sustain it, wrapping it around your weapon.
It sounded straightforward, but there was a reason these were defined as entirely separate Ranks.
—It means you can use your ultimate technique as your normal attack.
—......Ultimate technique? Normal attack? What does that mean?
—Just something I'm saying. Obviously, don't use it like that during the exam, okay?
—It's fine. I'm learning from the famous Finance Director, after all.
Recalling Adam's strange, unknowable words from long ago, Rus lashed out with her sword aura.
Cr-crack!!
But a sword aura lasting only a single instant could only shatter the Salt Spears—it couldn't cleave the Sacred Relic. It could only chip at its surface with shallow scratches.
As a 6th Rank, Rus had often faced situations like this against powerful enemies. The sword aura was her greatest weapon, but there were times when it wasn't enough.
But it had always been fine. Against Kirke, against Milia, against Risha, against Chloe—there had always been allies or special circumstances.
Now, however, she had to do this with nothing but her own strength.
......Only now did Rus understand the meaning of the last words Chloe had left her.
'I see.'
The method to sustain a sword aura was absurdly simple. You just had to be ready to die.
But being ready to die wasn't enough. You had to push through the physical limit of certain death—the body screaming that releasing more sword aura would kill you—and overcome it with sheer willpower. You had to have a reason you absolutely had to survive.
For Rus, that reason was Adam.
The reason she had remained 6th Rank despite enduring countless battles and life-threatening crises was this:
For the old Rus, the reason to survive had long since vanished.
A survival driven by vengeance and betrayal, a heart that wasn't truly desperate—it was never enough to reach 7th Rank.
Cr-crack!!
The sword aura flared. Another strike landed directly on the Sacred Relic, but still only shallow scratches.
Yet the aura didn't stop. Within the darkness radiating from the Dark Sword, Rus's sword aura blazed brightly.
Rus Spero.
She herself didn't know, but the name of the protagonist of <Dark Kingdom> was composed of two words meaning "Light" and "Hope."
At last, fully ascending to 7th Rank, Rus condensed the Dark Sword's aura.
The blade named Darkness now lit the dark mine shaft as if it had become a holy relic itself.
Shhk!
Rus's sword cut through the tides and spears of salt, and cleaved the heart of a god.
But what she cleaved was not only the Sacred Relic. Without realizing it, she also cut through the countless knots that had bound her.
Gasping for breath, Rus saw—
".........?"
From the wreckage of the cloven Sacred Relic, a pure light surged—
—and she watched it be absorbed directly into Adam.